Unable to get NetGear N150 with RTL8188CUS chipset to work.

[mrSplodgeMan]

Hi.

I've been struggling for a few days now trying to get my wireless USB dongle to work. I'm running the Pi with RaspBMC, then connecting to it from a laptop via SSH. I'm running everything as root (sudo -s) just to get everything working for now.

I have a powered USB 4 port hub connected to the Raspberry Pi, which has a dongle for the wireless keyboard and wifi plugged into it.

USB hub : Logik L4THUB10
Keyboard and mouse : Logitech MK320
Wireless dongle : NetGear N150

I've successfully managed to get everything working, including wifi, on the latest version of Raspbian "wheezy" (2012-07-15-wheezy-raspbian.zip).

I installed Wheezy first without adding any extra software (out of the tin as it were). I then used this script -

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/80256631/install...-latest.sh

More information can be read about the script here - http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripheral...i_Adapters

The script first asks you to leave the wifi dongle unplugged from the device, then at a certain point it asks you to attach it, it configures it and off you go. The blue light on the front flashes and it all works fine.

However, after reading these threads - http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?pid=9569 - http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=732

and doing some reading up on wireless networks on Linux in general, I still can't get the latest version of RaspBMC to work with the wifi dongle.

I would put the output from lsusb, but that only makes the terminal hang . RaspBMC still works fine, it's just the terminal that crashes.

Dmesg gives me :

... lots of
... other
... stuff
[ 5.330558] hub 1-1:1.0: 3 ports detected
[ 5.608846] usb 1-1.1: new high speed USB device number 3 using dwc_otg
[ 5.709208] usb 1-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=0424, idProduct=ec00
[ 5.709302] usb 1-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
[ 5.712749] smsc95xx v1.0.4
[ 5.773783] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: register 'smsc95xx' at usb-bcm2708_usb-1.1, smsc95xx USB 2.0 Ethernet, b8:27:eb:6ed:ad
[ 5.868839] usb 1-1.2: new high speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg
[ 5.970677] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=05e3, idProduct=0608
[ 5.970710] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[ 5.970741] usb 1-1.2: Product: USB2.0 Hub
[ 5.972015] hub 1-1.2:1.0: USB hub found
[ 5.972406] hub 1-1.2:1.0: 4 ports detected
[ 6.249087] usb 1-1.2.1: new full speed USB device number 5 using dwc_otg
[ 6.351934] usb 1-1.2.1: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c52e
[ 6.351979] usb 1-1.2.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 6.352000] usb 1-1.2.1: Product: USB Receiver
[ 6.352014] usb 1-1.2.1: Manufacturer: Logitech
[ 6.357832] input: Logitech USB Receiver as /devices/platform/bcm2708_usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/input/input0
[ 6.357993] generic-usb 0003:046D:C52E.0001: input: USB HID v1.11 Keyboard [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-bcm2708_usb-1.2.1/input0
[ 6.371027] input: Logitech USB Receiver as /devices/platform/bcm2708_usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.1/input/input1
[ 6.372152] generic-usb 0003:046D:C52E.0002: input,hiddev0: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-bcm2708_usb-1.2.1/input1
[ 6.449020] usb 1-1.2.4: new high speed USB device number 6 using dwc_otg
[ 6.550977] usb 1-1.2.4: New USB device found, idVendor=0846, idProduct=9041
[ 6.551023] usb 1-1.2.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 6.551044] usb 1-1.2.4: Product: 802.11n WLAN Adapter
[ 6.551060] usb 1-1.2.4: Manufacturer: Realtek
[ 6.551074] usb 1-1.2.4: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001
[ 12.351338] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p3): recovery complete
[ 12.354078] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p3): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[ 12.354210] VFS: Mounted root (ext4 filesystem) on device 179:3.
[ 12.354987] Freeing init memory: 112K
[ 13.353395] udev[60]: starting version 164
[ 13.490726] fuse init (API version 7.17)
[ 15.710252] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
[ 219.393303] Adding 125948k swap on /dev/mmcblk0p2. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:125948k SS
[ 226.066007] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
[ 229.742123] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[ 240.158671] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
[ 246.031583] init (619): /proc/619/oom_adj is deprecated, please use /proc/619/oom_score_adj instead.

I realise that the latest version of RaspBMC has the rtl8192 (I think?!?) firmware installed, but I'm wondering if that's getting in the way and needs to be blacklisted.

Any thoughts anyone ?

[mikeyp]

http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=780&page=4
Try the first post on this page

[mrSplodgeMan]

Thanks to both mikeyp and joeh for providing me with the solution.

Joeh's post worked first time and I now have a solid Wifi connection to my router from my N150. Superb! :-)

For reference I followed the first post here : http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=780&page=4 by Joeh.

The critical steps for me were :

1) Using the install.py script for RaspBMC, install the setup files onto the SD card.

2a) UNPLUG ALL USB WIFI DONGLES FROM ANY USB HUBS etc.
This for me was critical because if the USB dongle was left in, RaspBMC would load the wrong module at startup and forever block the installation of the correct modules. Just having the dongle attached was enough to stop everything else working.
I did still have my USB wireless keyboard and mouse plugged in. That hasn't caused me any problems at all.

3) Stick SD card into Pi, turn everything on and let RaspBMC finish installing.

4) SSH onto your Pi from another PC, then follow Joeh's guide. I followed it pretty much to the letter with one big difference.
I went through the entire post without the wireless dongle connected. The command :
sudo iwlist wlan0 scanning
therefore won't work as the Pi has nothing to use.

Once I had gone through the entire guide, I then rebooted my Pi and plugged the dongle back in. (It might be safer to turn it off, plug it in, then turn it back on as I kept getting electric shocks from the USB hub!).

Running the command : sudo iwlist wlan0 scanning
then gave me a list of all access points in the area.

The command : sudo iwconfig
gave back :

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"Deadpool" Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:22:75:44:CB:45
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Sensitivity:0/0
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:****-****-****-****-****-****-****-**** Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=100/100 Noise level=0/100
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sudo ifconfig :

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr b8:27:eb:6ed:ad
inet6 addr: fe80::ba27:ebff:fe6e:ddad/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:6073 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:3471 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:7513659 (7.1 MiB) TX bytes:347205 (339.0 KiB)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 4c:60e:62:4a:98
inet addr:192.168.10.30 Bcast:192.168.10.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::4e60:deff:fe62:4a98/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:601 errors:0 dropped:678 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:523 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:317115 (309.6 KiB) TX bytes:67548 (65.9 KiB)

Finally, unplug any network cables and reboot the Pi one last time. You should now be able to reconnect with SSH from another PC. Be aware that the Pi will assign the WiFi and Ethernet ports two different IP addresses, so you'll need to use a different IP address the next time you SSH to it.

RESULT!